Sunday marks the last day of the Independence Day holiday travel weekend – the busiest on record – and now millions across the country are heading back home.
According to AAA, 72.2 million people were projected to travel domestically for the 4th of July. That’s nearly two million more than last year and a whopping seven million more than 2019, AAA said in June.
The auto and travel service provided information from INRIX, a transportation data company, that broke down the worst times for departing and returning from America’s biggest metro areas. For SoCal, the worst time and place for people going back to Los Angeles via car is 5 p.m. on the 15 Freeway coming from Las Vegas; the busiest day for vehicular return travel to San Diego was actually Saturday at 3 p.m. on the 15 South from Palm Springs.
While highways might get clogged this weekend, airports like LAX are also expected to be crowded as thousands of people are heading home from 4th of July gatherings across the country, including Kieran Campbell.
“We came early…it’s LAX and we’re not really familiar with it,” said Campbell, who flew in from the New York area on Tuesday. “We wanted to make sure we had as much time as possible.”
AAA’s Independence Day holiday travel period runs from June 28 to July 6.
